Saturday 30 May 2015

The fragility of the imagination – by Lari Don

I sometimes feel unreasonable when I say that I can’t write in my lovely bright study, unless the house is quiet and I know I won’t be interrupted. (I know it’s really annoying for my family, and fairly contradictory, since I can write in noisy cafes, libraries, bus stations, train carriages and staff rooms…) But I know that in order to put my whole self into the world I’m creating, I need to feel confident that I won’t be distracted. And I’m discovering that sometimes there’s just too much life and stress and STUFF going on, for me to be able to create stories.

I’ve been thinking recently about how easily the creative process is derailed, and about the fragility of a writer’s imagination.

Last week, Nicola Morgan, a writer I greatly admire, for the books she writes and for the wisdom she shares about writing and publishing, wrote a powerful post about how she’s struggling (temporarily, I hope) to write fiction, rather than non-fiction. Her post made me think about my own writing.

As well as novels, I write retellings of old myths, legends and folktales. Fewer facts and more magic than most non-fiction, but even so, I find this process, the craft of retelling something that already exists, fairly robust, much less likely to be disrupted by someone asking what’s for tea, or by more fundamental disturbances in my life.

However, I find the process of writing fiction, creating the new world of a novel, much more fragile.

One of my novels crashed and burned a year or so ago. An idea I was entirely committed to, characters I loved, a world I was fascinated by, questions I desperately wanted to answer… And it died. I spent months researching it. I wrote 21 chapters. Then it just died.

I couldn’t see where the story was going. So I abandoned it. Put all the books and research notes into a cardboard box.

And then I put that box with all the other boxes. The packing boxes.

Because that book crashed and burned in a year when I moved house twice. A year in which I sold a house, failed to buy another house, moved out of the first house anyway, lived in a (wholly unsuitable) rented house, finally bought another house, and moved house again.

And I will never know whether the story collapsed because of fundamental problems with the idea, or because of the disruptive circumstances under which I was trying to write it.

I will never know, because I just can’t face opening that box and re-entering that story, even though I suspect the essence of the story is fine, and it was just too hard to create that world inside my head, when the world outside my head was so unstable. So that book is probably dead.

But a book which is NOT dead is the one I’m currently writing. I’ve had an unsettled couple of months, when it’s been hard to get the peaceful focus I’m beginning to realise is essential for me to write fiction. And I had a minor crisis last week, when I was on the verge of wondering whether my current novel was falling apart.

But then I realised I’ve been trying to sort out the central plot problem during a General Election (always a busy time in our household) and while one of my children has been on exam leave (giving me no daytime hours to write in a quiet house.)

So, rather than packing this book in a box, I’ve reminded myself about the fragility of my creative process, and I’ve decided not to make any big decisions about the plot until I have time to think in peace and quiet and calmness. (Next Monday, I hope!) I’ll give myself time to get back into this world in the way that works for me, rather than panicking and abandoning it, and souring my relationship with this story and these characters for ever.

What writers do is very strange. Perhaps we don’t admit that often enough. Writing fiction, for whatever age, is essentially quite odd. We invent worlds, and live inside them. We do it convincingly enough to invite others to join us in those worlds. We invent people. We have close and emotional relationships with entirely imaginary people. We give our characters lives, make those lives dramatic and exciting and painful, then sometimes we take those lives away.

That’s a very weird thing to do. It’s precious, it’s delicate, it’s fragile. It needs nurtured, not forced. And it can never be taken for granted. Writers have to be allowed to admit that, to ourselves first of all.

 PS – I’d really like to thank Nicola for her honesty last week. It helped me think about my own creativity and its flawed fragility...
  
Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 
Lari’s own blog
Lari on Twitter
Lari on Facebook
Lari on Tumblr

Friday 29 May 2015

My friend Anthony - John Dougherty

When I first met Anthony, he was - well, to say he was a struggling author would be a stretch. Truth to tell, he was probably one of the more successful authors I came to know in my new home-town during that early settling-in period. Some years back, he'd co-written a play which, as he put it, paid his mortgage and enabled him to go on writing.

Still, his career wasn't thriving. Despite a number of books, plays and films to his name, he was having trouble keeping a UK publisher. His books were good - I mean, really good - but they weren't selling in the sorts of numbers that made publishers desperate to publish them.

Something that impressed me enormously about Anthony, though - even apart from his readiness to break out the barbecue and a bottle of cava if I dropped round after his writing day was done - was his unwillingness to let the vagaries of the writing life get to him. Once, for instance, he reacted to being dropped by a UK publisher by knuckling down immediately and writing a new novel. It was called Death of a Superhero. It was published in the UK and, some time later, turned into a film starring Andy Serkis.

His work began taking him away from here more and more - book tours in Germany, working on films not only as a writer but as a director and producer. Still, we tried to meet up from time to time for a beer when he was in town.

On one such occasion, about a year and a half ago, he told me that he was working on a film about the life of Stephen Hawking. He'd written the screenplay, and was co-producing. It sounded interesting, though not necessarily the sort of thing to set box offices alight.

And then, a year later, I noticed that one of the big posters that frequently adorn our local cinema  ahead of a big release bore a picture that looked like... well, like Stephen Hawking. I wonder if that's Anthony's film, I thought.

It was. And you probably know the rest: The Theory of Everything was one of the big must-see films of last year, as it well deserved to be; it's a great film. When I saw it in the local cinema, the audience broke into spontaneous applause as the closing credits rolled.

I haven't seen much of Anthony since The Theory of Everything was released, but we managed to catch up in London a couple of weeks ago. He was looking very well, and feeling very lucky; the success of Theory has opened doors to him that he couldn't have imagined a couple of years back. At present he's juggling seven projects at one stage of development or another, including one with George Clooney. We chatted about work over a cup of tea, and he let me hold one of his BAFTAs for a selfie. It was lovely. Seeing Anthony, I mean; not holding the BAFTA. Although that was nice too.


I'm hoping we can get together for one of our increasingly infrequent pints before long; but I'm not likely to forget about him in the meantime. I keep bumping into display stands full of his DVDs everywhere from Primark to Waitrose.

Is there a point to this story? Probably. Perhaps it's about perseverance; battling on even when your career isn't going brilliantly. Perhaps it's about talent. Perhaps it's a callback to my last blogpost, the one about copyright - after all, without the continued royalties from his early play, maybe Anthony would never have been able to write the film that has well and truly made his name. But for me, more than anything it's about celebrating a friend who has encouraged me as a writer, and who deserves to enjoy every minute of the success he's worked so hard for.

_____________________________________________________________________________








John's latest book is the extremely silly Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP.

Thursday 28 May 2015

France's Zoella - Clementine Beauvais

France has its very own Zoe Sugg: she's called Marie Lopez but goes by the name of Enjoy Phoenix, and she's a beauty, make-up and life vlogger. Like Zoe Sugg, she's written a book, which was published a few days ago and is called #EnjoyMarie (the title sounds only slightly less weird in French). I wasn't the only 'old person' to discover her works on that occasion, but she's been fabulously popular online for a while.

Le livre d'Enjoy Phoenix, numéro un des ventes la première semaine.

Hardly had #EnjoyMarie been published that the press started mocking the book, with the trendy magazine Les Inrocks devoting an article to 'The 27 sentences that will make you think Enjoy Phoenix is the new Flaubert'. Each sentence is escorted by a sarcastic comment:

3. "We are a generation of words created by an ever-sharper technology and, without noticing, we're living under the attractive power of the webs of the Internet." EnjoyPhoenix > Edward Snowden.

17. "I shudder as I imagine drinking my first glass of alcohol... I hope there will be some." Spoiler alert: there was.

Etc. It's funny in some ways, but it's also a bit facile to mock a 19-year-old who started a blog five years ago as a means of dealing with school bullying, and who picked the phoenix as her animal of choice to express her desire to be born again and different. But then French adults are always cruel to teenagers, as I well remember.

Lopez's book is in many ways a bizarre phenomenon in a country which is far from having a literary landscape as cluttered by author 'brands' and celebrity books as the Anglo-Saxon market, even in children's and teenage literature. As the title of the Inrocks article indicates through the direct and snarky comparison with Flaubert, there is something distinctly disasteful, for the French mindset, about a book so obviously commercial.

It's worth saying here that Les Inrocks is in many ways culturally snobbish, but as regards edgy pop culture - they're not at all protective of highbrow culture; you would never find an article on Flaubert in there, so the reference sounds a little bit out of place. But even they, faced with walls of fuschia pink #EnjoyMarie books in each Fnac (the French franchise of cultural supermarkets), felt defensive enough to remind their readers of our literary canon, which in France would be packaged between white or cream covers. (Judging a book by its colour is very much a thing in my country.)

L'Express, meanwhile, has decided to compare the sales of #EnjoyMarie to those of the other best-selling non-fiction books of the moment, which are: a sociological study of the Charlie Hebdo demonstrators by an academic; a political study of Germany by a politician; an apology of blasphemy post-Charlie-Hebdo-massacre by a feminist intellectual; and a book on health and nutrition by some doctor. 'Enjoy Phoenix sells more books than all those people!!!!!' L'Express marvels.

And provides a diagram to prove this astonishing fact:



INCREDIBEUL! ZE POLITICAL ESSAYS ZEY ARE NOT AS MUCH SELL AS ZE BOOK ABOUT ZE MAKE-UP!


My French writer and illustrator friends are watching all of this with some amusement and not much anxiety. But some are mildly incredulous too, in part because of the unashamed money-making dimension of the enterprise. As I've written about before, the French market is much less commercially-oriented and there's much less money to be made; books cannot be discounted, and they are generally quite expensive (my latest YA novel retails at 15,99€).  

In a publishing world where advances for teenage novels are generally between 500 and 2000 euros, and there are never any announcements along the lines of 'NEW AUTHOR GETS FIVE BOOK DEAL FOR AN UNDISCLOSED SIX FIGURE SUM', #EnjoyMarie feels like an odd import from Britain or the US - it's no coincidence that the name sounds English. Interviewers and journalists spend a lot of time telling their readers about Marie Lopez's supposed salary.

Another interesting thing is that, as far as I can tell - I might be wrong! - Marie Lopez probably wrote her own book mostly on her own; unlike, as everyone here remembers, Zoe Sugg. Keren David wrote a great blog post on the matter a while back. Keren was annoyed "that no one from Zoella’s management team or publishers -  let alone Zoella herself -  wanted to give the ghostwriter a co-writing credit, or admit up front that Zoella needed a hand to get her ideas down in print." Like Keren, I think it would be far healthier if the world was actually told that writing is a proper job, which not everyone famous is always necessarily qualified to do.

It's time to confess that I haven't actually read Zoella's book (sorry), but it sounds to me like it was well-received by her fans. By contrast, Lopez's book is getting mixed reviews, including from its target audience. I think this is the first time a French publishing company has given a book deal to a teenage celebrity in this way, and I wonder if they underestimated the need to hire professional help to bulk up the content of the book.

Is this the beginning in the French publishing world of a more Anglo-Saxon way of doing things? Well, you can tell from the way in which people are reacting that it isn't something they're close to getting used to. But after all, ex-First Girlfriend Valérie Trierweiler's memoir on François Hollande sold hundreds of thousands of copies earlier this year. Maybe France is slowly edging towards this brave new world after all.
 ____________________________________________________________________

Clémentine Beauvais writes children's books in French and in English. She blogs here about children's literature, academia and other things.

Wednesday 27 May 2015

Hybrids by Lynn Huggins-Cooper

I am a hybrid. Not a strange hedgehog/human cross (although I like the idea apart from the whole munching bugs thing); not an alien life form - but that strange creature, a hybrid author. Nope; that still sounds strange. It sounds as though I am part author, part...other. Maybe penguin.

Anyway - what the term 'hybrid author' seems to mean to some people is that an author is traditionally published, by big publishing houses as well as self published - by themselves, presumably. This is not what I mean, however. By 'hybrid author,' I mean I am historically traditionally published, and have been for over eighteen years. In addition to that, I have started a small press. I know; that sounds crazy as publishers are going under or being eaten by giants. Not literally, you understand. That would be messy.

The Forest House Press began as the result of being left some money by my mum when she died. Now, my parents were extremely supportive of my writing, and had to have a copy of everything I published in what they called their 'archive' - unbearably sweet to remember that. So starting the press was something they would be proud of, and approve of. I  am not competing with any large (or even medium...or even small!) publishers out there; I know my niches and intend to publish in those. I have written craft, educational and self help books for years; we'll be publishing those. We are currently working on a range of patterns for kits and a book for Faerierealms. We are approaching non-traditional markets such as craft sellers, knitting shops and gift shops as well as book shops - we know where our customers live, as it were.


                                 Half author; half cupcake. The perfect hybrid for elevenses!

We are on a steep learning curve. I have a good team behind me, including two fabulous interns this summer. So watch this space - the hybrid author will be the bleary-eyed one in the corner.


Tuesday 26 May 2015

Hedgehogs, are they the new tigers? by Julie Sykes

The first book I ever wrote was a picture book about kittens. I sent it to a publisher who liked it very much; only they couldn't publish it because they already had enough books about cats on their list. The editor asked if I could write about something else. So I did. I wrote a book called Hedgehog's Apple. It was the story of a hedgehog, trying to find an apple for his tea. 

The editor liked that story too; only there was a problem. Picture books are expensive to publish and rely on co-editions, foreign editions of the book. This particular company worked closely with a publisher in America who wasn't interested in books on hedgehogs, as they weren't a native species. 

I immediately sacked hedgehog and threw away his apple. Then I hired a squirrel. The book (about Rufus going out to find some acorns for tea) became An Acorn for Tea. It published in America as Sara Squirrel and the Lost Acorns. 



I like hedgehogs. I was sad about getting rid of Rufus but not tragically so. Recently however, I was shocked to learn that hedgehog numbers are in sharp decline. The BBC's Michaela Strachan, co-presenter of Springwatch, wrote in this week's Radio Times, that 'Hedgehogs are declining at the same rate as tigers,' and 'they are in critical danger, particularly in London.' She goes on to say that if we don't do anything about it then hedgehogs will be gone in ten years. 

Hedgehogs need a huge amount of space to forage in - an area the size of TWO football pitches. Urban hedgehogs are often unable to travel such large distances partly because of garden fences blocking their way. 

And here's where we can help. If anyone with a garden could make a small hole under their fence it will allow hedgehogs the freedom to roam and find food. 

It's such a small thing to do so please help if you can. Better still, ask your neighbour to do the same. Imagine a Britain without the hedgehog. That would be tragic!

Monday 25 May 2015

Earning a Living from Writing by Tamsyn Murray

Some of you may know that I achieved a milestone recently. Seven and a half years after I first resolved to 'take this writing business seriously', I handed in my notice at both my part-time jobs to concentrate solely on writing. From 1st July 2015, I will be a full-time writer. Hurrah!

Almost immediately after I'd done the deed (told my bosses I was leaving), The Fear set in. How was I going to pay the bills and feed my children with no monthly salary? What if it all went wrong? What if I had made a terrible TERRIBLE mistake?

My husband tried to reassure me. "Don't worry, you can just do some more school events if we start to struggle." And he's right - children's authors are lucky in that we have an additional stream of income to tap into: school visits.

I like to think that I give good value to the schools who book me. My events are funny, interactive and designed to get kids talking about books long after I've left. And obviously while I'm off performing, I cannot be writing so I charge a reasonable amount for an event. I don't mean for the short run of promotional visits I might do for my publisher, to promote a new book or series - I mean an everyday school visit. Two assemblies and a signing, perhaps, or a workshop and an assembly. And it occurred to me that not all children's authors charge for these standard events. Some do free events ALL the time, to help boost their books sales. They never charge. At a time when schools' budgets are being squeezed, I can understand the appeal of a free visit too - author visits are a great way to boost reading for pleasure, which has all kinds of quantifiable benefits. But here's the problem: when authors do an event for free, they are devaluing the work all of us writers do. Look at it this way - imagine a plumber offered to come to your house and fit your new bathroom for nothing. Word gets around and soon that plumber is crazy busy. People decide that they don't want a plumber who charges a lot of money when they can get the same job done for free. Lots of plumbers who made their living out of plumbing now can't get any work. And worst of all, the people who need their bathrooms installed don't see why they should pay anyone to do that work. Pretty soon, not paying is the norm, even though the work done is of a very high standard. Do you see what I'm getting at?

If you are an author who routinely does school visits for free all the time (and again, I don't mean a book tour or the occasional freebie you might do at your own discretion) then you are stepping on your fellow writers to build your own success. I urge you to stop and consider what is a fair charge - the Society of Authors has done some excellent work on this area recently, guided by the extremely wise Nicola Morgan.

Take a look. Value yourself and understand that constantly offering free events is undermining the rest of us. And help me sleep better at night now that I don't have the cushion of a monthly salary to snuggle up against.

Sunday 24 May 2015

What’s in a word? by Liz Kessler

Ten days ago, something wonderful happened for me. The very first book I ever wrote was finally published.

It took fifteen years. Coincidentally, it became my fifteenth published book – and my first YA novel.



The book is about seventeen-year-old Ashleigh Walker going through the final year of her sixth form in school, and the journey she takes during that year. It is what can loosely be called a ‘coming of age’ novel. It is also about Ash coming out as a lesbian.

Some people prefer the word ‘gay’. I don’t mind that. Some people use the word ‘queer’. I don’t mind that either (as long as it’s the modern usage of the word – ie celebrating diversity in sexuality rather than the older definition used as an insult to abuse and offend). Some (not many) still say ‘homosexual’. I don’t even mind that, although it makes me cringe a little to hear it, as it’s a bit old-fashioned.

One thing I have become aware of, during the lead up to, and aftermath of, this book’s publication, is the fact that there are an awful lot more words being used in discussions of sexuality than there used to be, and that for many people – particularly those who are new to the discussion – this can be bewildering. I’ve been in this game over twenty years, and I’m getting a little confused myself.

I’ve found that in discussions about the book, I use different terms, depending on who I’m talking to. In that respect, I’ve been feeling a bit like a chameleon, changing colour to suit my surroundings. One interviewer referred to my novel as ‘the gay book’. I wasn’t too keen on that (and told her) but that wasn’t because of using the word gay; it was that I hope it is much more than just ‘the gay book’. But other than that, I’ve found myself using different terms interchangeably, to fit in with the language of the people I’m talking to.

And I think this is OK. It’s a bit like having a wardrobe full of clothes and deciding which outfit is appropriate, depending on where you are going and who you are mixing with.

For example, I was (gasp, squeal, slightly hyperventilate) on Woman’s Hour and I don’t actually think that the words lesbian, gay or queer were used at all. Jenni Murray introduced the book by saying it was about a girl who realised she didn’t fancy boys, she fancied girls. We talked about coming out. But that was as far as the language went. And I am 100% OK with that. This is mainstream, national, hugely popular radio, so going back to the wardrobe analogy, I guess this is the place to put on my smartest outfit and do my best to blend in.

At the other end of the scale, I was the guest author on the lovely Lucy Powrie’s very popular #UKYAchat on twitter. If we’re to describe this in terms of the wardrobe, I guess this was the event where I stood in front of my clothes, trying to find something I looked cool and young and hip enough in (and cursed myself for even using the word hip, as that only showed how actually unhip I am) found my wardrobe a little wanting on this score – and decided just to go in what I had on.

The discussion on this forum was great: it was amazing to see such a variety of books being recommended; it was heart warming to be part of a discussion that was so open to books about sexuality. Hand on heart, though, there was a small part of the discussion which I have to say left some of us slightly running to catch up: the terminology.

A bit of background.

The gay movement is generally credited to have begun in the 1960s, with the Stonewall Riots. It was about rising up against years of being abused, beaten, oppressed and even killed by homophobic laws and actions. Back then, using the word ‘gay’ instead of ‘homosexual’ was radical and liberating.

The word ‘lesbian’ was later added and became widely used by many lesbian feminists in the 1970s.

My own political awakening came in the 1980s and this was around the time that there were arguments in the movement about adding the word ‘bisexual’ to the banners. Those arguments were huge and divisive within (what eventually became known as) the LGB community. Look how far we’ve come!

Similar arguments raged over adding the ‘T’ for transsexual, and I think these arguments lasted even longer. But now, LGBT has become a term that many are familiar with, and a banner that I am proud to stand under.

But even that already feels out of date in some circles. In terms of sexuality, we are living in times where people no longer want to define themselves with broad labels which basically divide everybody into three main headings: straight, gay, bisexual. The times we are living in today are about a richer, more diverse, more grey-area-y way of defining ourselves.

For some of us, this can feel challenging. I freely admit that I find it difficult to keep up at times. Over the last year or so, I’ve been introduced to the acronyms QUILTBAG, and LGBTQIA+ and others like this, which are highly-inclusive acronyms and umbrella terms that many people choose as their label. If this is how people choose to define themselves, I believe it is their decision to do this and nobody else’s. If people feel that ‘queer’ is the only word that sums up their own sexuality, again, that is their decision. Some people struggle with words like ‘queer’ and ‘dyke’, associating them with the negative connotations of the past. For others, ‘queer’ is the only word that they feel truly expresses who they are. It is up to each of us to define ourselves – not to listen to instructions from others.

But in the struggle for more and more inclusive terms, I believe it is also important to remember that not everyone is where we are, and to keep our hearts and our minds open to those who are on our side but might not have all the language to express that just yet. To some people, a coming out novel is brave and risky. To others, every YA novel ought to have characters from every bit of the sexuality spectrum and not be making a big deal about it.

Some might say that YA authors have a responsibility to represent every aspect of our diverse society and to use our novels as ways to educate young people in areas where schools, parents, newspapers and the internet are lacking.

I don’t actually agree with this. Yes, I do believe that books need diversity – and I am proud to be part of doing this in the world of YA books. But I do not believe that we have a responsibility to represent every aspect of society in every novel we write. I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves, our consciences, our deeply-held beliefs – and above all, actually, to our stories and our characters. If we start to think of our books as places where we owe it to anyone to write about certain things in certain ways, our books will turn into political manifestos rather than worlds of characters and stories to entertain, illuminate and impassion young readers.

I have never written a book where my starting point has been political in any way, or where I have sat down and decided that I want to educate or bring about an awareness of certain issues or themes. If I did that, I believe I would kill the story flat and no one would want to read it. Instead, what I have learned to do is to trust that if I open my mind to my stories, and allow my characters to explore and follow their own journeys, the things that matter to me will find a way of sneaking into the pages. And if they do, you can guarantee they will find a way of sneaking into my readers’ hearts and minds too, somewhere along the way.

So whilst the twenty-something-year-old me might have been out there with a megaphone, telling people how they should think, talk and act, I am more comfortable with the way the forty-something-year-old me does it, which is to move more gently, to compromise, to be more accepting. I am willing to listen, to learn as well as (hopefully) educate, to know for a fact that I am not always right and to be willing to let someone tell me how I can do things better.

I have also (finally) figured out the acronym I am comfortable using for myself. It is: LGBT+ which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender with the + as a way of not excluding other sexual orientations or gender identities, but stopping the abbreviation becoming too long! I have seen this used quite a bit, and it feels like the right one for me. See, the great thing is that I get to choose that for myself.

Going back to the wardrobe (which I’ve just realised could also be called a closet) analogy, this feels a bit like I’ve been looking for the perfect outfit for ages and have finally found it. And so I’m going to step out of that closet and wear my new outfit with confidence, and I’m going to shout about my new book with pride, and I’m going to continue to bang a drum for LGBT+ people everywhere, and hope that one day there will be so many of us standing under these umbrella terms that we find we have the whole world in one place and the labels are not needed at all.


Buy Liz's new book Here
Follow Liz on Twitter
Check out Liz's Website 

Saturday 23 May 2015

Vaguely reading and writing-related technology – Jess Vallance

Last month, book blogger and all-round teen marvel LucyPowrie asked me to take part in a Google Hangout as part of her UKYA Day. Sure, I said. No problem. What's a Google Hangout? 

Anyway, it turned out to be quite cool – video conferencing essentially. I do a LOT of conference calls and this was easily one of the least awkward ways of doing it. 



It occurs to me that there are probably lots of useful apps, websites and other tech stuff out there that I've never heard of, so really, what I’d like to do in this post is just ask everyone to tell me all about the useful things I don't know about. But that doesn't really seem in the spirit of blog-posting, so I’ll kick things off with a few tools I find quite handy.

1)      Pocket
This is great as an anti-procrastination tool. You set up an account, then you send any interesting links you find on the internet to your virtual ‘pocket’ so you can come back and read them when you’re waiting for a bus/in bed/not trying to write a book. 

Click on the link in your Twitter feed or wherever, then click Send to Pocket.




2)      Cold Turkey
Another one to help you avoid time-wasting. Cold Turkey lets you block yourself from certain websites for a set period of time.
List the offending sites, then choose how long you want to block them for. 


3)      Feedly
There are lots of blog aggregators out there, but I like this one best. It lets you add all the blogs you regularly read into one place, sorted by subject.
The numbers show you how many new blog posts since you last checked. 

4)      FreeAgent
Unlike the others in this list, this one isn't free but it is well worth the money if you’re self-employed. It lets you keep track of all of your income and outgoings, send invoices, upload bank statements and store your receipt scans in the right places. (NB this screen shot is from the company’s demo site, in case you’re all looking at it and thinking I’m loaded.)


5)      Spritz
This one’s more weird than useful, but I’m adding it just for interest’s sake. 

It’s a bit of technology that aims to help you increase your reading speed by showing you one word at a time at a set rate – the idea being that by keeping your eyes looking in one spot rather than scrolling down a page, you can take in words more quickly. 

It’s quite hard to explain but try it out on the website. I predict that most people here will hate it as it completely ruins the natural rhythm of the text and makes you read every single word, which I don’t think we’d normally do. 

Set your WPM speed, then the words will appear one by one. 




OK, that’s all I've got. Now tell me yours. 

Website: www.jessvallance.com
Twitter @jessvallance1

Friday 22 May 2015

The death of (my) imagination - by Nicola Morgan

I don't know what I'm asking for here or why I'm burdening you with my trivial writer's angst. No one's dying, though something is dead. Perhaps it's just a silly scream in the dark and I should deal with it silently. All I really ask is that if you think there's no such thing as writer's block you do one or both of two things: think again or say nothing. You don't know.

My imagination has died. "Use it or lose it" is the brain's well known way of functioning. And not functioning. Well, some time ago I stopped using my imagination and filled my writing brain with non-fiction; and now I've lost it. I used, years ago, to write fiction and non-fiction happily in tandem, bobbing from one to the other constructively and profitably. But a few years ago the non-fiction took over. It took over because I loved doing it, because it was (for me) easier, because it was successful, because it was bringing me in royalties, because it led to lots of wellpaid events (generating more non-fiction writing as I prepared myriad handouts and presentations and blogposts), because it gave me self-esteem and reputation, my niche, self-actualisation.

I thought that was enough for Heartsong. I should never have forgotten that for me it wasn't. Imagination was the lifeblood of my heartsong and I'd accidentally left the tourniquet on too long.

So, when I tried to write fiction, without which I don't feel whole, I found that the fiction muscle, my imagination, was dead.

At first, I thought, as you are thinking, that it was temporary. Dormant, not dead. All I had to do was all those things we know about, the things you're all wanting to say in support:

  1. Just do it - apply butt to seat and fingers to keyboard and write
  2. Give yourself time - don't worry
  3. Get outside and walk
  4. Stop thinking about it - it will come back
  5. Try a new environment
  6. Try another new environment
  7. Do some creative napping
  8. Listen to your dreams
  9. Read lots of fiction
  10. Read poetry
  11. Allow yourself to write rubbish
  12. Make yourself write rubbish
  13. Set yourself targets; don't set yourself targets
  14. Read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
I did them all to one degree or another. In fact, Writing Down the Bones nailed the problem in such a way that it created a new block by identifying the block: "If all of you does not believe that the elephant and the ant are one at the moment you write it, it will sound false. If all of you does believe it, there are some who might consider you crazy; but it's better to be crazy than false. But how do you make your mind believe it and write [it]?"

And that is the problem. I don't believe. Because of that dead imagination.

You see I'm trying to write a novel in which the central idea - invisibility - is a physical impossibility. You need your imagination to write or to read about it. And when I come to write it, to create it, all the time I'm thinking, "Don't be stupid: that can't happen." There's a disconnect between what I know stories do - the suspension of disbelief - and my ability to suspend disbelief for long enough to create belief.

I can't make anyone else believe it because I don't believe in it - what I'm trying to write or my ability to write it - any more. 

I don't expect an answer. And I don't want to sound self-pitying. As I say, no one died. There are really only two answers: give up or carry on trying to force life into a dead thing, charging up those chest paddles.

Or give my imagination a name: maybe Lazarus. No, I never believed that story either. Actually, I probably did once, before.

[Edited to add: funnily, someone crashed into me as I was walking along the street just now and he looked completely shocked and confused, as though I had been temporarily invisible and he was trying to work out how that could be. Then he just carried on walking as though he was thinking, "Yeah, so, she was invisible. So what? Get over it."]

Thursday 21 May 2015

Being paid and a writer's confidence.

Many years ago, a friend of mine, an artist, got into a prestigious London Art College to do postgraduate work. One of the first things said to her was 'you are going to have to charge more for your paintings if you want to be taken seriously.' So she put up the price and demand increased. It made her feel rather odd. They were the same paintings, but people seemed to value them more just because they were more expensive. Was money so important?

I have found this whole subject very difficult. The only source of funding for my book 'Girl with a White Dog' published March 2014 was from my wonderful family and, in the last two years before my mother's death last May, my carer's allowance of £58.00. Just going up to London to the wonderful Wiener Library http://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk would, for example cost me over half what I earned as a carer.  I spent lots of money on research books. My husband believed in me and encouraged me to use our family money from his earnings to go to Germany for a weekend to visit Dachau. Then my book was published, and because I believed passionately in the issues it discussed, I did lots of free talks about them locally and accepted some invitations to travel up to London to discuss them (and hopefully sell the book), but none of the invitations involved offers of payment, and I was too embarrassed to ask. It seemed like I was exploiting the sufferings of the Holocaust to ask for payment.  I was asked to go to a particularly interesting event, but when I asked on what terms (too vaguely and without explicitly mentioning payment) they emailed back (I worried that the words showed that they were hurt),  'we just thought you'd be interested'. I was too embarrassed to say I couldn't afford it.

For some reason for which I am very grateful, my worries about my seemingly incessant spending of money I hadn't earned back came to a head at the Federation of Children's Books Groups Conference this year. I was feeling bad about spending yet more of our family money to go away to it and when talking to three friends from twitter, Zoe of @playingbythebook @minervamoan and @chaletfan I unexpectedly burst into tears. They were wonderful. I told them that I kept being asked to do free things by good people who had v little budgets, and I didn't know how to say 'no'.

They were wonderful. They made me practice saying 'yes, I would love to come. I charge the standard rates.'

Then, barely quarter of an hour later, whilst @chaletfan was standing nearby, a teacher approached me, asked me if I did school visits and I said 'yes, but I would have to be paid,' she said 'of course!"

I have very recently joined the Society of Authors. I think it will pay for itself over and over again just by going me the courage to refer to their rates.

This week I was asked at v short notice to go to talk to a local group of retired women for an hour about my books. I have done lots of similar ones for free. I said 'I am afraid I have no transport,' - they said 'we will pick you up and bring you home.' I said 'I have just decided to start charging' they said 'no problem, we have a budget - how much do you charge?' I said 'I am not sure if you could afford the Society of Authors' Rates' and they said 'we can pay up to £60.00' I said 'O.K.'

The night before I could not sleep. How could I dare to charge such a huge amount for an hour? If they normally paid speakers then they would see that I was not worth the payment. My confidence was at rock bottom. I wanted to ring them and say I would do it for free. My husband said 'Anne - you have no idea how interesting the writing process and business is for people who don't know about it, and  you are very good at talking about it.' He also reminded me that I HAD been paid before for speaking: my friend, a writer and Creative Writing lecturer at a local university, had invited me soon after 'Girl with a White Dog' was published last year, to speak to her students and had paid me as visiting speaker - Edinburgh Literary Festival had paid me last summer for being interviewed with Dawn McNiff about our debut books 'Girl with a White Dog' and 'Little Celeste'. Edinburgh Literary Festival had paid us for speaking, and had ALSO paid for accommodation and travel expenses. I had had lovely feedback, but  9 months between paid gigs is a long time.


So the day came and I packed 5 bags of books and manuscripts and proof copies and a box and a notice board  with pictures of Nazi children's books and white German shepherds and I spread them all out on  tables in front of about 30 women.

Then I spoke. It went so well. I found that my husband was right - just telling them about the process of getting published was interesting for them. They were so lovely. They thanked me over and over again for coming at such short notice and apologised for not being able to pay me more. I even sold some books! Then they drove me home and said it was a fascinating talk and they were so happy that I had come.

So what is the point of this post? I want to tell other writers not to be embarrassed to charge and urge them to apply to join The Society of Authors to give them confidence. I want to thank the Edinburgh Literary Festival and @Heidi_Colthup for inviting me to talk and for paying me last year, and  @playingbythebook, @chaletfan, @minervamoan for being so kind this year and telling me that I shouldn't be embarrassed to charge for talks. Thanks Joanne Harris (@joannechocolat on twitter) for that wonderful blog post, a link to which I will put at the end.

None of the ladies I spoke to yesterday are active on twitter or will be following my blog, but they have no idea how much they have helped my confidence. I have to honour a couple of re-arranged free events, but after that I will no longer feel arrogant or greedy for asking to be paid. I owe it to my family. I will try to charge the standard rates so as not to undercut other authors.

And please, if you are someone who invites speakers - please read Joanne's Harris blog on festivals. She is right.

http://joannechocolat.tumblr.com/post/112440623146/on-festivals-and-fees

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Not an Issue? - Joan Lennon

My first YA novel is teetering on the brink of becoming A REAL BOOK, but for me, as for all writers (I'm guessing), the story and everyone in it have been real from the very beginning.  
Silver Skin is a scifi/historical fiction inspired by the Stone Age village of Skara Brae on Orkney.  There are 3 main characters: Rab, from the far future, and Cait and Voy from the Stone Age.  When it was (wisely) suggested that Rab was coming across as too young, I didn't/couldn't write a different, older character.  I just aged Rab.  I imagined what he would have experienced in the x number of years that would pass to get him to the right age.  He's still Rab, just older.  How could he be anyone else?

Why am I telling you this?  Because, as Silver Skin's publication date approaches, I'm becoming aware of "issues" ... 

For example, I'm officially white, though in reality I'm pinky-yellow with occasional unfortunate flushes of beetroot.  Does this mean I can/should/must only write about pinky-yellow people with the occasional unfortunate beetrooty sidekick?  This is a legitimate question and we won't be finding the definitive answer to it any time soon.*  But the situation I find myself in isn't one I consciously sought.  I blame my characters.  I blame the story.  

Rab is black.  (He's also male, which I'm not, but that's another hornets' nest altogether).  He could have been any colour under the sun because he is from the far future. when "human colouring and characteristics had been jumbled together for so long that any couple could produce a child of any appearance.  Nobody stuck out because everybody looked different."  But he walked into my brain black and I saw no good reason to bleach him.  

Cait is taller and paler-haired than the people she lives with.  

Voy, the Old Woman, has arthritis-crippled hands.  

The bulk of the story is set in Neolithic Orkney, at the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age, which was a time of major climate change.  Rab's future world has been shaped by climate change too.

But this is not a book about being black, or about having a tall blonde heroine, or about disability, or about climate change.  Those things are just in there, because they have to be, for this story to be this story.

Or am I being naive?  Is every book about the issues?  As writers and as readers, what do you think?  



* I've pulled up just a few of the excellent ABBA posts on the issue of issues for you to re-visit:






(publication date 16 June 2015)


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Tuesday 19 May 2015

The Power of A Book - Lucy Coats

Sometimes you discover a book and immediately know it will be a part of your life forever. Twenty years ago or so, I discovered the OUTLANDER series by Diana Gabaldon (kind of uncategorisable, but think time-travel, history, Jacobites, the best love story ever but also so much more) and have been hooked ever since. They're not children's books, but an older and more mature teen (16+) could quite well read them. I've heard it said that they are so popular because they portray the human heart and human condition in all its pain and glory, and wouldn't disagree.
A trio of characters from the TV show (with added book fan)
Gabaldon (known to her readers as Herself) wrote the first book as an experiment, to see if she could. Her main character, Jamie Fraser, was inspired by a time-travelling Scotsman in an episode of Dr Who. There are now eight (extremely fat) books, with a ninth being written. The first has just been made into a very successful TV series, (now being shown in the UK on Amazon Prime) - an incredibly difficult thing to pull off in the face of millions of rabid fans who can quote from the books verbatim and have strong ideas about how the characters should be portrayed.

And talking of fans, the power of this one book series brought people from all over the world together in a very literal sense this weekend. I have just returned from the 2nd Outlandish Gathering in Crieff, where over 200 lovers of the books from 14 countries spent a weekend having fun and raising money for charity at the same time. In my desire to help a good cause, I (allergic-to-exercise-woman) even took part in a Highland Games and channelled my inner Artemis in the archery competition. (Let's not mention the extreme aching after five tug-of-war bouts.)

All this happened because of the power of a story. That's pretty darned amazing in my book!

Monday 18 May 2015

Going quiet - Linda Strachan

It occurred to me recently that writers are to be found all over the place these days.

Spending time on social media, attending conferences, book signings and festivals.












Writers are blogging, tweeting, working on their own websites, writing guest blogs and chatting on facebook.

We travel to schools to meet our readers, teach creative writing,  attend all manner of book-related events,







...many of them delightful and interesting.









But it was reading one writer's post on Facebook about GOING QUIET for a while because of a deadline, that made me stop and think about it.  All this activity takes up a lot of time and energy.

Exactly how much time (that could or perhaps should be devoted to our craft) do we spend on talking about what we do, and writing about our working and personal lives.









 Yes, there are some of us lucky enough to have sheds or hideaways to escape to but we still have to make time go in there and shut the door on the world.




Let's face it procrastination has always been part of a writer's life for most of us, especially if there is not a looming deadline, and sometimes even when there is!


So,  I have a question for you....

How much more writing do you think you would do if there was suddenly no internet at all, no blogs or social media, if you were forced to stay close to home, with only snail-mail and the telephone as contact with those outside the family?

Would you be more or less productive?

Or is it an essential part of your life that powers your creative thought process?


---------------------------------------------
Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children.

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 



Sunday 17 May 2015

Big Words or Little Words? Vocabulary in Children's Books by Emma Barnes

I was at the Headingley LitFest during a question-time on children's books. A children's writer in the audience asked the Sunday Times book critic Nicolette Jones whether it was OK to have long words in a children's book – or should he keep it simple?

I can't remember exactly what Nicolette said to this but it was something along the lines of “it depends”. Which is the only sensible answer to give, really. It depends on the book. It depends on what the writer is trying to do.

It's not actually something I've heard children's writers discuss much: vocabulary. Unless you are writing for a reading scheme, say, we write what we write, as the muse directs (or so we like to think)! But shortly afterwards I came across two different perspectives on the subject, from two of my favourite children's writers.

The first was Judith Kerr. In her memoir, Judith's Kerr's Creatures, she explained that, inspired by Dr Seuss of Green Eggs and Ham fame, she deliberately limited the words used in Mog the Forgetful Cat.

I determined that, like Dr Seuss, I would use a vocabulary of no more than 250 words in the book about Mog, and I have done this with all my picture books since, with the exception of Mog in the Dark, which...has a vocabulary of only just over fifty. I also determined never, ever to put something in the text that the child could already tell from the pictures. Why should they struggle to read something they already knew?”
(Judith Kerr's Creatures, p86)

If Judith Kerr says it's so, it must be so – because Mog is one of the most brilliant picture books of our times. And the interesting thing about Mog is that it is not a book children typically use to learn to read. It is a picture book their parents read with them (my guess is that for many Mog fans, by the time they are learning to read themselves they will know Mog's story by heart.) So it's not just that Judith Kerr created a good “easy to read” book for beginner readers – it's rather that she created one of the most loved of all picture books, regardless of word count. She was able to create a great story which happened to use very simple language.

Another of my favourite writers took a different approach.  Eric Thompson created the Magic Roundabout (both books and TV scripts). His family recalled:

Once a lady wrote to him complaining that he used too many long words in The Magic Roundabout and how were children meant to understand them? He got out the Oxford English Dictionary and wrote back using all the longest and most difficult words he could find, like 'palimpsest' and 'oxymoron' (which sounds rude but isn't). He also wrote a strongly worded letter to a mother who had smacked her little boy for calling his sister a 'mollusc'."

(Phyllida, Emma and Sophie Thompson, introduction to The Adventures of Dougal)

And he was right.  There is a huge joy for kids in the use of language, even if you don't actually understand the words. The elaborate names and spells that you get, say, in Harry Potter (the tradition of bizarre character names once seen in authors like Dickens now lives on mainly in children's books). Or in Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga, where the characters not only have daft names, but spout Shakespeare and came out with gloriously incomprehensible remarks like: “It is a sign of genius to reconcile the seemingly disparate”. (I used this remark as a child on my own parents, undeterred by the fact that 1) I didn't know what it meant and 2) I couldn't pronounce “disparate”.)

Intriguingly, both Judith Kerr and Eric Thompson seem to have been reacting against rather joyless adult views about what's suitable for children. In Kerr's case this was the "long and not particularly interesting stories with a lot of complicated words 'to enrich your child's vocabulary''' that she found at the local library (Judith Kerr's Creatures p68). In Thompson's case, it was the claim children could not enjoy anything they could not understand. Their responses, though in different directions, led to stories that have been loved by adults and children alike.

As a writer, I used to love big words. Maybe this is why Sam and the Griswalds – a madcap story of the adventures of five crazy kids, aimed at 8-12s – has a similar difficulty score on the Accelerated Reader scheme to The Lord of the Rings. (Making it the perfect book for the highly literate eleven year old who still wants to read about football or kids falling in rivers.)

More recently, though, I've changed tack, and my writing style has become simpler and more straightforward. It's true I have dropped the age range, but I think it's more to do with the fact that I've become interested in the story, first and foremost, and I haven't wanted big words and funny names to get in the way. I suspect I'm part of a wider trend – I think language in children's books, especially in the Young Adult section, is generally simpler in part because so many books are now written in the first person by a child/teenage protagonist.

I've sometimes found it awkward in schools, where children are encouraged to believe Big Words Are Better. “Why do you use “said” so much?” a group of primary school pupils asked me. “We're always told to find a more interesting word instead.”

I explained my choice of "said" was not because I didn't know any alternatives. And I read them a passage from my book, substituting different words – remarked, whispered, groaned etc. It soon started to sound daft. Furthermore (I said) a lot of the times people simply are “saying” and so it's by far the most accurate word to use. In addition, if I want people to focus on what's said, rather than being reminded that they are reading a book, then “said” is the nearest thing to invisible on the page.

They got it. But their teachers looked mournful. It wasn't that they disagreed (they said) but if they taught that way their pupils wouldn't pass their tests.  The official view was that long words were good, the more fancy adjectives the better, and always find something else to use instead of that  humble “said”.

Never mind. There are fashions in everything.

Besides there really is no right or wrong on this one.  (Or is there?  Do comment.)

It just depends....


 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever is published by Scholastic.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.  It is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps

Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Saturday 16 May 2015

Bedtime Stories by Tess Berry-Hart

Every night when I take three-year-old Benjy up to bed, we go through the same bedtime routine. Benjy scampers ahead and closes the bedroom door: I knock gently on it:

Me: “Knock knock knock.”

Benjy: (reciting from inside) “I wonder who that can be? It can’t be the milkman, cos he’s already been. It can’t be the grocer’s boy, because it’s not the day he comes. And it can’t be Daddy, because he’s got his key. We’d better open the door and see.”

I push the door ajar. “It was a big, furry, stripy ...”

“TIGER!” shouts Benjy joyously.

To which I reply: “Excuse me, but I’m very hungry. Can I have tea with you?”

Benjy opens the door wide. “Yes of course! Come in!”

So we’ve already re-enacted the first few pages of Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came To Tea, and that’s even BEFORE we get to the bedtime story ...!

I’ll be honest, I’m not always in the mood for a bedtime story. Often, after a hard day, I simply can’t wait to get Benjy and his little brother Daniel into bed and collapse on the sofa with dinner. But taking the time to carve out just a few minutes of the bedtime routine for sharing a story has given us immeasurable rewards. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already aware of how bedtime stories can benefit your child’s neural and emotional growth. Research shows that bedtime reading improves bonding between parents and children and strengthens their brain’s development for language; a child learns to recognise words and the building blocks of pronunciation, and learns new vocabulary directly outside of their immediate environment.

“What story would you like to have tonight, Benjy?”

Benjy pulls out Puffin Peter by Petr Horacek. Again. I groan inwardly.

“Wouldn’t you like to read something else tonight, sweetheart?”

“Nooooo Mummy!” Benjy looks horrified. “I want Puffin Peter. He gets lost, and then the whale helps find him again!”

Voyage and Return! One of the seven basic plots! I put on a bright smile and open Puffin Peter (again).  

Though re-reading the same story over and over can drive parents round the bend, repetition actually encourages a child’s predicting of outcomes, appreciation of patterns and understanding sequences.  Added to that, reading can lower stress and cortisol levels as children learn to associate reading with emotional warmth and fun.  Of course, reading at any time of the day will do this, but bedtime is particularly the time when parents need to calm children down and get them in the frame of mind for bed.

For Eleanor, a journalist and mother of three-year-old Zak, a bedtime routine has always been very important, especially one that revolves around story time. “It's a really good way to wind down a rambunctious child and also because the bedtime story routine was a key part of my early childhood.” Eleanor’s own bedtime story experience as a child fed directly into developing her own love of literature:

“I have a very clear memory of the first time I made the leap from having a story read to me to reading to myself. One night my father refused to read me a story as he usually did saying I was old enough to read it myself. I protested, saying I couldn't possibly read a book to myself if it didn't have pictures in it. My Dad wouldn't give in and left me on my own. But by that age it was such an intrinsic part of my daily routine that the idea of going to sleep without some kind of story first seemed impossible. And so of course I read by myself for a while before turning the light out.  I still find it the best way to wind down before sleep.”

These days, Eleanor reads widely with Zak, who first got interested in books with Emma Chichester Clark’s Blue Kangaroo series and has recently gone through various phases of Paddington and Richard Scarry. “I think the Cars, Trucks and Things That Go combination of animals, transport, machinery, obscure facts and the fantastical really seems to appeal to a small boy's imagination & budding male geek brain.”

Observing my own children’s journey with books, Benjy has always been keen on reading since he was literally a couple of months old, but his younger brother Daniel seemed to have much less interest, preferring until recently to concentrate on building blocks or kicking a ball. However, since Daniel turned eighteen months, he’s suddenly become obsessed with books. Perhaps it’s because he sees his older brother constantly with his nose in one, or perhaps he knows it’s a sure-fire way to get some close attention and Mummy-time by dragging up a battered tome of lovingly-torn pages with a winning smile just as I’m about to get the dinner on. For Daniel, his favourites are Rod Campbell’s classic Dear Zoo and Eric Hill’s Where’s Spot, just as they were for Benjy before him. With this in mind, I conducted a quick poll of children in the neighbourhood and friends to find out which their special favourites were.

For my neighbour Helen, freelance writer and mother of one-year-old twins Sonny and Daniel, the Mr Men boxed set have proved quite a hit. “They grab the books and point at them indicating they want to read. Recently they were given Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and they love the flaps and caterpillar holes. The best board books overall which we’ve read again and again since they were little are Lynley Dodd’s Hairy MacLairy from Donaldson’s Dairy, and Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s Each Peach, Pear, Plum. They keep them for ages in their cot reading on their own.  I’m really looking forward to getting them reading more as they get older.”

Being able to use a child’s own imagination and creativity in reading is an important resource for parents to tap into. Four-year-old Maggie’s current favourite, according to her mother Jenny, is Jon Klassen’s This is Not My Hat. “It’s got very few words but richly deep illustrations and we like to make up what's not being said - and that can change every time we read it! Maggie always gets frustrated by the end - you have to guess what happens to the little fish. Invariably she opts for the big fish having eaten him!” Maggie herself thinks that it “is really funny because the hat is too small for the big fish anyway. I wish we found out where the little fish went though!”

Her three-year-old cousin Cassie's favourite book is currently The Spooky Spooky House by Andrew Weale and Lee Wildish. “I like it because it feels like I'm actually in the story and I'm following the little girl around,” says Cassie. “At the end you find out she's spooky too, but I'm not scared of her because she's my friend!”

Being able to process their own experience through reading is another powerful tool for a child.  Three year old Ella has recently become interested in Princess Mirror-Belle and the Dragon Pox by Julia Donaldson in part, says her mother Anya, because her own brother had chicken pox. “And for the past few days she's been asking for Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker Suite by James Mayhew. I asked her tonight why she liked it and she said “Because Ella Bella finds a friend.” She obviously relates to Ella Bella as she is just starting out at preschool making new friends so it's a subject on her mind!”

That’s not to say that a bit of escapism doesn’t go amiss.  Four-year-old Zane LOVES The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet (and others in the series by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter) his father Paul tells me.  “He gets so excited as the story builds and we get to the page in the middle where he gets to shout to POOOOO!  His other favourite is Gigantosaurus by Jonny Duddle because it rhymes, but even more because he likes the fact pages at the back where he can always remember far more of the dinosaur names than Daddy and Papa!”

And the classics will always endure of course. “My son, James (6) has just been reading Alice in Wonderland and loves it - can't beat some of the classics,” says Becca Batchelor. “They both (James -6, Eddie - 3) particularly like the Oliver Jeffers picture books, and have done for ages. The Snorgh and the Sailor by Will Buckingham is also great.”

The last word must go to four-year-old Isabella Maya Iserles McLaren who finds it hard to decide on a clear favourite, though. "I don't know what my favourites are because I have so many! I like Mog because it's a cat book. I think it's funny when she jumps on a flower that has prickles because normally cats don't do that. I like Winnie the Pooh because he's funny and eats too much honey and then Christopher Robin has to fix his tummy. I like The Gruffalo's Child and The Gruffalo. I just like them. I don't know why Mummy, I just told you I like them!"

As for me, when I tuck Benjy in with Puffin Peter, Where The Wild Things Are and Christopher Nibble – he insists on keeping his books in a lumpy and rather uncomfortable pile in bed with him at night – it feels like the beginning of a wonderful adventure. I can’t wait to get him started on some of my own childhood favourites for bigger children once he grows up a little: Danny The Champion Of The World, Stig of the Dump, Little House On The Prairie, The Hobbit...

They do say that having a child makes you experience things the second time around as if it were your first time too.  I’d definitely say that was true for re-reading!

So do let me know - what were your favourite reads as a child? And what do your children like reading now?